Last year, we reported that Bioware had specific opinions about Skyrim. They went on the record and stated that they admired the scope of Skyrim, and also acknowledged that both Skyrim and Dragon Age are lore-heavy games where your actions mattered.

Dragons, they're so hot right now. And not just because they're fire-breathing lizards,…
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While cagey on where they'd take Dragon Age next and whether or not it'd be influenced by Skyrim, they did mention that they were hoping to recapture some of what Dragon Age: Origins did well.

Now, in a Game Informer interview with Bioware's Aaryn Flynn, Bioware doesn't tiptoe as much when it comes to discussing what similarities we might see between both dragon-centric games.

"You can't look at a game like Skyrim and not think about how impressive what they've accomplished is—or [think] that's an interesting new direction or that there was something that didn't work well for them that we could take in a new direction. So, we're always influenced by these games, especially in a relatively tight-knight genre like RPGs," Flynn stated.

Perhaps more interesting is the idea that Flynn poses next: that the RPG genre should emphasize more exploration, like older games such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights do. Flynn even recognizes that Bioware's major franchises, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, have shied away from these roots—but that Bioware wants to return to them.

Idle musing: if Skyrim is an influence on Dragon Age, and Bioware wants to emphasize exploration... could we expect an open-world Dragon Age? I mean, look at that Dragon Age III artwork. That's kind of open-wordly lookin, eh?

We can't know for sure until they reveal more about the game. Unfortunately, following the mixed critical reception of Dragon Age 2, Bioware has been rather mum on what they're doing with Dragon Age III.